Bookburners

by Max Gladstone

  “No you don’t,” Perry said, and caught the ankle on Sifuentes’s bad leg. But it wasn’t enough. Sifuentes made a final chant, and the air in the room began rushing toward the portal, dragging the professor into it. Dragging Perry with him. They both fell in. The air stopped again.

  Menchú and Sal both scrambled over to the portal’s edge. They could see Sifuentes and Perry falling away from them, still attached, still fighting.

  “I am not losing my brother like this again,” Sal said.

  “And I am not letting you go alone,” Menchú said.

  They both stood up fast. One of Menchú’s hands found one of Sal’s. They locked their fingers around the other’s wrist and jumped in together.

  4.

  Menchú thought he would be more frightened. But the fall didn’t feel like falling. It was more like sinking. He looked at Sal, whose teeth were gritted, her eyes fixed on the figures below them. Menchú remembered that she had done this before, and he took strength from her closeness. Perry and Sifuentes were still locked together, fighting. It seemed to Menchú that they were getting closer, though any sense of motion was faint at best. The luminous pink sky all around them got even thicker as they fell to wherever they were going. He allowed himself a quick second to worry about how they were going to get back out, return to the world, and looked behind him. To his surprise, he found that the portal they’d jumped through was right above them. He thought if he turned around he might be able to swim back up to it.

  In time, some sort of terrain appeared below them. At first it looked to Menchú to be an endless tangle of threads, until he realized those threads were bigger than he’d thought. They were tentacles. They were limbs. Whatever they were, they were coming up fast. He and Sal were now floating down among them. The pink sky was blocked out, and they continued to move through an orange gloom. Menchú and Sal could choose to land on one of the limbs if they wanted to, but Perry and Hannah were still fighting. They crashed into one of the thicker limbs, rolled off it, hit another one, kept falling. At last, they stopped, and Menchú and Sal caught up.

  Sifuentes’s body was failing. Hannah could push it far enough to be a match for Perry, but no longer for all three of them. This time, Menchú, Sal, and Perry didn’t even have to communicate. Menchú took Sifuentes’s right arm. Sal took the left. With Perry, they pinned the archaeologist down. Menchú put one hand on the archaeologist’s wrist, the other on his shoulder. The way Sifuentes was moving, Menchú was pretty sure the arm was broken, maybe in two places. Sifuentes couldn’t feel it now. He would later for certain. Sifuentes roared twice. Then he fell silent.

  “Where are we?” Menchú said.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Hannah said. Now that they were standing still, Menchú understood more clearly that the light was shifting because the limbs all around them were moving, knotting together, fusing, coming apart again. Everything changing. When he looked down, he saw that the soil at his feet had extended several tendrils over his shoe, up his sock.

  Hannah made Sifuentes grin at him. “The land rose to meet us. It is alive. I called it and it came to get us. It is getting you a little now, if you didn’t notice. It’s harmless, but the bigger animals who are coming are not. You’re going to have to do what I say if you want to live.”

  More mind games. But Menchú was starting to see the power he had.

  “You’ve tormented me so much,” he said to Hannah. “But you’ve had every chance in the world to kill me and you haven’t yet. Why is that?”

  Hannah’s grin faded.

  “I’m not saying I don’t want to live,” Menchú said. “I do. So much. But I’m starting to think that you need me to live even more than I do.”

  The thick limbs all around them began to rustle. Through the gloom, Menchú could see massive shapes moving toward them, getting closer. He could hear their slow, ragged breaths. They smelled tangy, like melting metal.

  “You think one human matters to me that much?” Hannah said. “With all the slaughter you’ve seen?”

  “I think maybe I do,” Menchú said.

  “How is that possible?” Hannah said. She was trying to mock him. Menchú could hear it in Sifuentes’s voice. But the blows weren’t landing.

  “I don’t know,” Menchú said. “But I think I can get you to tell me. Perry, take his arm.”

  Perry moved off his legs and pushed down on Sifuentes’s right shoulder. Menchú’s hunch was right; the archaeologist was too weak to fight back. Menchú stood up and waved at the shapes moving ever closer toward them in the shadows.

  “Hey!” he said. “We’re here. We’re here if you want us.”

  “You wouldn’t commit suicide just to prove a point,” Hannah said.

  “Wouldn’t I?” Menchú said. “After what you’ve done to me? The things you’ve made me see? You took away my town and everyone I loved there. I have tried hard to move on from that, but I think you and I both know the truth. In the end, I don’t really have anything to live for. Nothing is keeping me here. And a meaningful death doesn’t sound so frightening to me.”

  He took a step away from them. One of the shapes resolved itself into a massive creature with seven legs. A head with three mouths perched on a stalk that bent down toward the priest.

  “Here I am,” Menchú said. “I’m ready.”

  Hannah cried out. “Enough!”

  Menchú stayed where he was. The portal was still open. Other shapes drew near. They were hooting to each other, unifying their voices in a rising crescendo, getting ready to charge.

  “Menchú?” Sal said.

  “Take us back or let me go,” Menchú said. “Take us back or let the work of decades go to waste. Your choice. I’ve already made mine.”

  The animals’ voices tore into howling. Their feet shook the land beneath them. Hannah sighed.

  “Let me up. I’ll take us back.”

  The animals thundered forward as Hannah barked out a series of words Menchú couldn’t understand. The four people shot upward, toward the portal. As they left, and just before the portal closed behind them, Menchú got a look at the creatures colliding beneath them. They collapsed into each other as if they were made of clay. Pieces flew off of them and stuck to what was left of the tangle of limbs around them after their stampede. And the parts that had collided stayed together. They made new animals that were all legs and no faces, one leg and half a mouth, an eye dangling from a flap of flesh. They howled in pain, their prey gone, no direction left to go in, and the land still trying to consume them, as Menchú thought it must have since the day they were born.

  • • •

  The four of them lay in the bare room in the ruins of La Lágrima. Menchú, Sal, and Perry, battered and out of breath. Sifuentes, possessed and broken. Still speaking with Hannah’s voice, seeing with her eyes.

  “This man is spent,” Hannah said. “You’ve made me take everything he had. First his crew. Then his life. I would never have conducted myself this way if you hadn’t shown up so fast. I would have been patient. Done what needed doing in the time it needed. But you made me rush. You can consider all this your responsibility.”

  Sal, panting, caught her breath. “I won’t, though,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” Hannah said.

  “I won’t accept responsibility for what you’ve done when we came to stop you.”

  “Stop me?” Hannah said. A retching shudder came out of Sifuentes’s throat that Menchú realized was laughter. “Child. Your every action for months has been in my service. Why do you think I have spared you?”

  “Your service?” Menchú said.

  “You have all played your roles well,” Hannah said.

  “Is this about magic flowing into the world?” Menchú said. “Are you trying to hasten it?”

  “My boy,” Hannah said, “to begin with, you have it backward. More magic is not flowing into the world. The world is moving into magic. To use an analogy you might understand: The tide is not rising. T
he land is sinking. The flaws in the world are starting to show.”

  “You mean from when it was made?” Menchú said.

  Hannah ignored him. “Pressure needs to be released in some places. For many, many years, our goal was suppression. For which I cannot thank the Vatican and the Society enough. I have been watching its work for a long time, with great satisfaction. I have helped, in my way, when necessary, to make sure the right people are involved. And Father Menchú, you have exceeded my expectations for you on every count. Until now.”

  “Because now you’re letting magic in,” Menchú said.

  “There is no alternative. There is too much pressure from above on this world, this universe. Too much pressure from below. It used to be enough to keep the magic out, but now it’s a question of releasing stress. Of controlled bursts, to prevent explosions. Do you understand?”

  “The hydra,” Sal said.

  “Was a test. The magic needed to be let in, just enough to keep the borders stable between this place and the next. I was counting on you to help me contain it, and you did.”

  “We are not your puppets,” Menchú said.

  “Oh, child,” Hannah said, through Sifuentes’s ragged throat. He coughed again, couldn’t stop for a minute. His face contorted, just like the boy’s had in Flores. “I have been trying to do the right thing,” Hannah said. “I have been trying to save this world, because I believe that the world is worth saving as it is. We put too much effort into building it to let it go now.”

  “There,” Sal said. “You said it again—you built the world. What do you mean?”

  Hannah smiled again. “Where did you think all this came from?”

  “What?”

  “Everything. Sun. Sky. Earth. Forms distinct from other forms. Time, this beautiful odd arrangement where after always follows before. We made all that: a project. An experiment. Because it intrigued us to try. And it’s falling apart, now, while responsible parties dither on the correct course of action. Under pressure. I keep trying to save it, because someone around here should do her job.” Blood leaked through her teeth. “No matter how unpleasant. And now it gets worse.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sifuentes doesn’t have time to explain.”

  “Why tell us all this now?” Sal said.

  “Because,” Hannah said, “I have to change my plan. Since you’re no longer cooperating.” Sifuentes gave another long, hacking cough.

  That’s it, Menchú thought. I’ve had it with this. He dropped to his knees, bowed over the dying man, and brought his face in close to look into Hannah’s eyes.

  “Listen to me,” he said, “and listen well. You have talked so much about your plan, about the greater good you think you’re doing. You have talked about saving the world. But here, in the world, all I see from you is devastation. Chaos. A slaughter. You have hurt and killed so many people I might say that I’ve lost count, but the truth is that I haven’t. I remember every single person that you maimed and destroyed in my sight. I remember the looks on their faces, their surprise, their terror. I remember how their eyes begged for mercy before they became yours, and how broken they were when you left.”

  He put his hand on Sifuentes’s chest.

  “This man,” he said, “this smart, inquisitive, and compassionate man, his death is your fault. You, and no one else, have murdered him. And if he’s just part of the cost of saving the world to you, then I say that the cost is too high. I say let the world change, and let us deal with what’s coming, one person at a time. Let us see if we can save ourselves. Though I know you’ll never do that.”

  Sifuentes’s body gave out a rattling breath. His eyes were still Hannah’s. His parched lips parted, and he showed his teeth. He was trying to smile.

  “You’re right,” Hannah said. “I won’t.”

  And as Menchú watched, Sifuentes’s eyes darkened, from Hannah’s pale gray to his own deep brown. The expression on his face changed, from Hannah’s serene superiority to a twisting mix of pain and fright. The look of a man who knew he was about to die.

  “I’m sorry,” Sifuentes said. “I tried to fight her.”

  “We all did,” Menchú said.

  “Pray for me,” Sifuentes said.

  And Menchú did, as the professor took his last gasping breath.

  5.

  Menchú knew Cardinal Fox wouldn’t be happy to learn where he and Sal had gone, or about Perry’s involvement, and he was right. Fox first lectured him over the phone in Flores, saying that he had been foolish to go on a mission in an unofficial capacity. He accused Menchú of doing so just to avoid the thirty-six-hour clock. Though even the cardinal understood that thirty-six hours wasn’t enough time to get to La Lágrima unobtrusively. And in time, Fox also agreed that they couldn’t just leave the archaeological crew dead in the jungle. It wasn’t humane. Everyone had been trying to do the right thing.

  “Do you think you stopped this demon?” Fox said.

  Menchú had a small debate with himself, decided that the truth was best.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  Even the cover-up story required only a small lie: that Sifuentes had not met them at the trailhead north of Flores, but given them instructions on how to get through the jungle themselves, including a stop at the camp they’d set up. So in the official telling, Menchú, Sal, and Perry had come upon the crew at La Lágrima already slaughtered. No one alive to tell them what happened. It was an international incident, requiring Sansone from Team Two to work with both Mexican and Guatemalan authorities in delivering the Vatican’s official positions on what had happened and why it had been Menchú who found the crew. Sansone landed on the idea that the Vatican, in this case, had simply been lending a hand in an academic’s scholarly research, never imagining that anything so horrible could happen. There was no reason for the authorities on either side of the border to doubt the narrative. Meanwhile, police in Guatemala questioned Menchú, Sal, and Perry, who corroborated the official story. They only needed to be careful not to mention that Sifuentes had met them where he had, and that they’d spent a day and a half in the jungle together. That was easy enough to do. There was a half day of quiet tension, of Menchú holding his breath, while the policeman who interviewed them sought for and found the driver who had taken them to the end of the road in the first place to make sure their story checked out. But it turned out that the driver agreed with their version of the story. Menchú suspected that maybe Sansone had bribed the driver, but this turned out not to be the case. According to the detective, the driver hadn’t been paying much attention at all. It was dawn; the driver was sleepy at the time; and he had given so many people so many rides that he was foggy on the details, beyond remembering that he’d given a priest a ride to the edge of the jungle a couple days ago. The detective chuckled a little when he told Menchú that.

  “It’s like the beginning of a bad joke,” the detective said.

  “Yes,” Menchú said, forcing himself to smile. “It happens to me a lot. I am often the beginning of a bad joke.”

  Ha, ha, he thought to himself. Ha, ha.

  The story made the papers in Guatemala and Mexico. The official line was that the prime suspects were drug runners. Perhaps gangs had been using the site as a stop to move drugs north toward the United States. Maybe a shipment had been passing through when the crew happened to be there. In any case, the authorities said, the crew had seen something they shouldn’t have, and paid for it. A few journalists and public commentators cried foul. It didn’t look quite like the normal gang violence, which usually left bodies only to send a message, and tended to dig mass graves otherwise. What kind of message would a gang be sending by killing a bunch of academics? The public conversation about it generated heat but no light. The authorities vowed to investigate further. And two days later, Menchú, Sal, and Perry were free to go.

  They had not spoken much since the jungle. There had been too much to do, and Hannah’s last words, he
r explanation—if it had been an explanation, and not just another lie—felt too big to address. The silence swelled between them, like a blister after a burn. Sal tried, on the hotel balcony the night before she left, where she found Menchú at prayer with a small glass of rum. “Father, if it’s true what she said, about the world sinking …” There was no second half of the sentence.

  “It changes nothing. Before, we saved people. We will save people now.”

  “But if the angels made everything …” She trailed off again, and he understood why, or thought he did. The consequences seemed too vast to comprehend—yet what did they mean for her life? For his?

  “What does it change?” Menchú asked. “If she is not lying, she still didn’t make the world. Only the part where we live. She calls herself an angel to confuse us.”

  “I don’t know, Father.” Sal stared off into the hot, dark night. “The way she talked sounded a lot like Genesis, didn’t it? The world without form and void. Dividing dark from light, day from night. Land from sea. Before from after. What if we’re just an abandoned science project?”

  “We’re not abandoned.”

  “I know you believe that.”

  “It’s not belief,” he said. “It’s faith. It’s a way of being: sheltered, grateful, humbled, and always striving.”

  “Toward what? If she’s right—if we’re really abandoned, then what is the point?”

  “Faith and work are how we make purpose. How we fulfill purpose.”

  “I hear you,” she said, but he could tell she was still unsure. She did sit beside him, though, at the table, in the dark, while the moon rose.

  Menchú saw Sal and Perry off at the airport in Guatemala City, then took his bag and headed outside, out of the new part of the terminal, through the older part, and into the scrum of shouting cab drivers and relatives holding signs at the airport’s exit. He waved down a friendly-looking man in a baseball cap and a plaid shirt, who drove Menchú to a corner a half mile away where the local buses—old school buses from the United States painted in bright colors and fixed with racks on the roof—were heading into the highlands. He boarded early, waited as the bus filled with women, men, children, while the ayudantes hauled their luggage and packages to the roof and tied them down with ropes and bungee cords.